Waiting In The Wings

Thursday, January 30, 2014

We were allowed to buy fabric if we were making a quilt for an exhibition or for publication, I had forgotten that we have the annual Quilt Show here in Auckland in November and I have in mind a quilt using a wide variety of solid colours in strips. My stocks of solids are years old and after looking through them I realised there was no way they were suitable - so I just had to put an order in for the jelly rolls - yes, I possibly could have got away with just two or three rolls but I hedged my bets and bought five.

I shall try and be very good and save my pennies from now on.

Linking up now with Fabriholics Anonymous
and will show the results of my fabric fast slip-up later in the year!

Next link up I should have more to show from using up some of my fabric stocks.

The first month of the year and time to show our finishes for January.

I had gaily stated that my goals for this month were

a. to bind the huge quilt for my daughter

b. to quilt and bind my Fractured quilt

Sadly I have only been able to meet a. and bind the quilt. The backing for Fractured is all ready but the last five weeks have been extremely difficult due to the death of my mother in law and DH took off to England for three and a half weeks to help with arrangements there, I had imagined myself tucked away in my quilting room sewing like crazy but I just couldn't seem to summon up the energy or enthusiasm, I am back on track now and will have two or three things on my list for February

Excuse the not very good photo, the sun was so bright and as my design wall is just not big enough to take a 100" x 80" quilt I had to throw it over the balcony fence!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

First off I had four blue cats, then I had six more last time I posted but I never had them all sitting together!

Here they are

Now some of you may have visited The Objects of Design where Sally T and her accomplice Tommy
seem to have enticed two of my cats along to see her cranes - not so - as you can see my two are still here, it seems we are dealing with two sets of identical twins! A first perhaps in the feline world and a delight to see. I wonder if any other "cats of a different colour" will hop along to visit Sally and Tommy during the coming months!

I had high hopes of showing my blue 16 patch quilt-in-progress but as no progress has been made there is not much point!

Linking up now with Super Scrappy to join all those other scrappers!
Looking forward to our next colour
Happy QuiltingMaureen

Thursday, January 23, 2014

I should be at my machine sewing more 9 patches for my MATO quilt "Desert Rose" or more 16 patch blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014 (waiting for the colour for next month) or sewing the crib quilt for our youngest grandson or even quilting my Fractured quilt but I decided to do something which had been bugging me for ages, my large crate of scraps was becoming so full that I could only just pull it from under my sewing table to add more pieces to it, time to make the choice on what to keep.

The photos above really don't do the amount of material justice. Some of these fabrics have been hanging around for a good 15 years or more and what you see is only part of the problem, yesterday evening was spent on this and after all the time it is taking I am seriously considering just pulling the special pieces and putting the rest into a huge bag and asking the local primary school if they would be able to make use of them it's just going to take me too long to sort every bit out into colour families.

One task to cross of my list though is the binding on the Bento style quilt for my daughter,

I decided I just couldn't face hand stitching the odd 400" or so on the back of the quilt so bit the bullet and after carefully pressing the binding over I machine stitched from the front - I couldn't quite believe that the stitching didn't show - although it's a different matter on the back side, not quite a straight line of stitching but I'm not stressing about it.

On the subject of scraps there will be more scraps in the future because part of my order of batiks arrived yesterday, absolutely gorgeous! Can't wait for the other package to arrive. These were ordered before January 1st so I am not going to get into trouble from Fabriholics Anonymous.

Back to the scrap heap and then I think some work on Desert Rose tomorrow, DH arrives back from the UK in the morning so it will be an early start collecting him from the airport.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

With a few more up on the wall you can see they can be made to face either left or right, it's not as boring when they begin to be mixed up and the effect will be great as we start to add our new colours month by month - wonder what the colour for next month will be.

We have one more week from the "the blue month" and I pondered about the wisdom of trying to make something more in blue very quickly this week maybe a mug-rug something along those lines, but in sorting through my project boxes I came across a number of 16 patch blocks from way back, some put together and the others cut out all ready to go - obvious choice to crash on and get a few more made in-between the other commitments!!!!

I figure I could probably put enough blocks together in the time left to give me a lap quilt.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Here are four of my blue cats for Scrappy Saturday - I have more to make
and some will be facing the other direction. I made a cot size cat quilt many years ago for a grandson and always intended making a larger one - so here's my chance!
Angela chooses a different colour each month which makes for super scrappy quilts.
I need to make 10 cats per month in the chosen colour so six more to be put together in dark/bright blues before the end of the month, in fact I am hoping they will all be sitting to be photographed by next Saturday.

The main part of the cat only needs a piece of fabric 6x8and1/2" which is easy to find in the scrap box and I had some decent size pieces of the black from an earlier project so I was happy, I love black with bright colours.

There are quite a lot of bloggers taking part so I'm linking up now with Angela at superscrappy who is organising The Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014 - just click on the button on my sidebar for more information.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Events over the past two weeks have conspired against me due to late night and early morning telephone conversations with family in the UK regarding the health of my mother-in-law. Things just got too much for me and I was really tired and couldn't for the life of me summon up the energy to quilt.

It became obvious on the 30th December that it was only going to be a few days before the end so my whole morning of the 31st was spent with John organising flights, insurance, putting affairs in order here before he flew out. Sadly we had completed more or less everything and he was flying out that night when we had the call that she had passed away. John obviously still flew out to join his three brothers and carry out all the necessary arrangements, he won't be home until towards the end of January.

I had such high hopes for showing a photo of Desert Rose ready to be basted and quilted ( the one above was taken with me perched on the edge of my high cutting table so not straight) and thought that when John left on Tuesday I would work on and finish it, but I feel so drained physically and emotionally that I couldn't do it. However, today is another day and I plan a quiet weekend to hopefully "re-charge my batteries" and move forward.

I did have a lovely surprise in the garden early this morning a new gladioli had opened - I had forgotten all about these in the garden - so I was thrilled to see the colour.

Now I'm going to link up with everyone else and looking forward to seeing how many have all their borders completed.

The link is here at Fabrics and Flowers, we have one more link on the 31st January so stay posted!

Friday, January 3, 2014

What a great way to get organised and finish off those quilting projects languishing in sewing room
drawers/cupboards, when I read about A Lovely Year of Finishes I knew I had to join in! I shall be linking this post to Fiber of All Sorts so please go along and see what goals we have all set ourselves for this month. There is also a button on my side bar.
Below are two projects designated for finishing this month, the first is a monster quilt for my daughter 84" x 104" and this just needs to have the binding on - all 400" of it!

The second is my Fractured quilt from the Quilt Along sponsored by Vicki last year, this now needs to be quilted and bound.

I'm also working on my quilt for the quilt along "Midnight at The Oasis" and will be posting again tomorrow on this and linking up with everyone else and although I need to have the top complete by the end of January the quilting will come later so I haven't included this in my finishes for January.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

I'm afraid this post tonight really has nothing to do with my quilting, sadly my mother in law passed away yesterday morning in England. We were told it would be a few days and so yesterday morning I was busy organising the first flight out for John to get back and see her as soon as possible, we had just completed booking the flight and all the other matters involved when we had the call from his brother to say Mum had died just ten minutes earlier. John flew out last night and should be arriving at Heathrow in an hour or so after a 24 hour journey, still having another three hours to reach Heywood where she lived.

This was a lady I first met fifty years ago - don't the years just fly by so quickly - she would have had her 93rd birthday on the 4th January. I spent some hours yesterday evening with my memories and the celebrations and fireworks going on until after midnight and began thinking about a quilt to make in her memory, when my Mum passed away twelve years ago I worked on a quilt which now lives over the back of my chair in our lounge area.

I do hope you all enjoyed your celebrations and will take this opportunity to say I wish you a very happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.